It All Started With the Riddles: A Harry Potter AU
by IridescentDragoness
Summary: She tries so hard to please him; why not give her a chance? Harry Potter AU where Tom Riddle Sr. stays with Merope, so their son never becomes Voldemort. Will be multi-chapter soon! Then I can explore the effects on everyone else, from Lily to Tonks. Pure, utter, and total fluff for which I am not sorry in the least. Comments make me happy, so comment and review please!
1. The Riddles - Where it all began

Looking up at him, miserably, she confesses, "I'm sorry for this, Tom. All of it. But I can't tell you I'd have done anything differently. I've loved you for years, and I just... couldn't stand it any longer. Can you forgive me that?"

Beside her on the floor sits a shattered glass potion bottle, silvery fluid clinging to the shards. Finding an excuse to turn her eyes away from him, she kneels and begins cleaning up the mess she'd made.

Tom had watched her cringe as it hit the floor and broke into a hundred sparkling pieces. Whatever life she'd had before, well, it was written all over her face.

He sighed. It wouldn't do to just walk out on her, would it?

ooOoo

"It's a, a ... royal family, of sorts," she stammers.

Well then. He couldn't do much better than that for a wife, could he? Royal blood. Now that the bruises had healed, when she dressed up, sometimes she even looked it. Merope liked green. Dark with silver, bright with gold, half her wardrobe was green. And she still kept a small gold locket and a similar ring. "It's all I've got left to remind me," she'd told him once. "There's nothing else left of my family."

Weeks pass, and life takes a new turn.

_Pregnant. _With_ his_ son. Even if he'd wanted to leave, how could he now?

He lays a tentative hand on her shoulder as she beams with joy. "What shall we call him?"

"Tom Riddle for his daddy, and Marvolo for mine."

Tom Marvolo Riddle.

He liked that.

ooOoo

Fatherhood suits Tom the elder better than he would have thought. Even the two Riddles up in the old manor become fond of the boy. As often as Merope will let him, he takes his son to see them - through the back way, of course, to avoid the riffraff. Tom Marvolo grows up quickly, charming and well-spoken if not kind, and his Hogwarts letter soon arrives.

Merope had told him all about her... oddity... as soon as he'd decided to stay with her. If this was the same magic that helped her bring home the strange gold coins, Tom Riddle Senior was happy to let his son learn it.

ooOoo

"_What_ did you say?" he roars. The other students scuttle back. Bullying the younger students he couldn't care less about, and even enjoyed, but one more word against his dear Muggle father...

Little did they know just how much worse things could have been...


	2. Severus Snape - He never saw her again

A tattered picture on the desk, out of place in a too-nice frame. It was of a smiling redhead, holding a baby and waving at the camera. He trailed his fingers over a pile of dusty old letters, hesitantly picking one up. Its shadow flickers in the low light as he reads softly, "Hello, Sev. How've you been? I'd head that an old friend of yours, that Riddle man, started teaching at Hogwarts! Maybe you should try that, you'd be a great teacher. You were always so good at Potions..."

Snape remembers. How he marked his notes in that old school textbook and let her borrow it whenever she asked. He's have given her the moon if she'd wanted it. But, oh, there was nothing in return... He pushes it back, not too roughly.

Another letter, a newer one. "Still seeing Potter. His head's deflated quite a bit since our school days, you might like him now..." He throws it back as if it were burning. As much as he hates to look at it, Severus can't bring himself to throw even that one away.

With one hand, he rifles through the pile again. There's one almost from his years in Hogwarts. "They're just bullies, Sev. Lucius and the others. At least one will end up in Azkaban, I'm sure of it." It hurts to know she's right, she was right about them, all of it. His old friends were in bad places. Bellatrix had recently been locked up for torture of a Muggle man, just another outlet for her cruelty. Severus allows the letter to slip through his fingers, watching it flutter back on top of the pile. A dove shot from the sky, trailing feathers. The letter lands on the pile with a flurry of dust.

Finally, he picks up the most worn of the letters, an old paperclip still dangling. Hoping it will say something different this time. "You know I can never love you back, Severus. I'm married now and I have a son. If you can't come to terms with that, we can't continue this..."

He'd never replied.


End file.
